Galileo Messengers

From 1981 to 1997, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory kept team members and space enthusiasts informed about tortured path of the Galileo mission through newsletter that ran mostly quarterly, with occasional interruptions, to 45 issues. They're being posted here thanks to the scanning effort of Patrick Wiggins, who had kept a complete set of the Messengers in excellent condition since receiving them.

Each Galileo Messenger is in PDF format, scanned in black and white at 200 DPI, amounting to about 1 Megabyte per page. Most issues are 4 pages, but some are more.

Links take you to the PDF documents. Below each link is a listing of the section headings within each newsletter and of the photos, diagrams, and artworks printed along with the text. You may also download Zipped collections of the bulletins:

Issues 1-21 (75 MB): Development to launch, April 1981, to November 1989

Issue 8, October 1983 From the Project Manager; Galileo Open House; Meet the Team: John Givens; Single Event Upsets; WWWWWHIllustrations: Galileo stowed in the Space Shuttle; Galileo in launch configurationPhotos: Development Test Model; Signatures; John Givens; Probe and Orbiter in SAF

Issue 17, December 1986 From the Project Manager; Radio Science; Meet the Team: David SmithIllustrations: VEEGA trajectory; VEEGA antenna and thermal control modifications; radio occultationsPhotos: H. Taylor Howard; David B. Smith

Issue 21, November 1989 From the Project Manager; Launch to Landing; Galileo: Up to Date; Checking Out the Probe; Galileo Mission Summary; What's in an RTG?Photos: Launch at Last! [launch photo album]; Galileo's RTG

Issue 23, April 1990From the Project Manager; Galileo: Up to Date; Networking Out of This World [about the DSN]; Meet the Team Leader in the OET [Robert Kocsis]; For the Flight Team; So Long...[by R. J. Spehalski]Illustrations: DSN antenna complexes;Photos: Venus; Canberra's 70-meter antennaTable: Galileo Mission Summary

Issue 27, April 1991 (Special issue for Earth-Moon encounter, differing from usual format)A Closer Look at the Earth and Moon; A Second Gravity Assist; A Glimpse at the Earth's Environment in Space; A Glance at the Earth Through New Senses; A Shakedown CruiseIllustrations: Galileo trajectory; Earth's magnetospherePhotos: the Moon from Galileo; Earth from Galileo; Antarctica; Simpson Desert in Australia

Issue 34, June 1994From the Project Manager; Ida's Moon Discovered; Up to Date: Ida Encounter; Navigation; Gravity Waves; Routine Operations and Testing; Anomaly Status; Uplink Generation; Ground Data System; How Can an Asteroid Have a Moon?; Name That Moon!; Comet Codiscoverer Speaks at JPL; Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 to Crash Into Jupiter; In Memory of James B. Pollack; Reader SurveyIllustrations: Binary orbitsPhotos: Ida and its moon; Ida's moon; David Levy; chronological series of Ida over most of a rotationTable: Galileo Mission Summary